


God Save the Thief

by Bellatrix_Wannabe_89



Series: OQ on Holiday [5]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, OQ on Holidays, OQonHolidaysWeek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 22:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15783294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellatrix_Wannabe_89/pseuds/Bellatrix_Wannabe_89
Summary: "Robin… you can't rob your own gift shop." "Why not?" "Because it… you just can't." "Don't think of it as robbing a gift shop, think of it as cashing a long overdue commission check." OQ Holiday Prompt 2





	God Save the Thief

Regina thought it would be a good idea. She thought Robin would find it amusing, maybe even give him a boost he seemed to need after they got back from New York.

She decided to take him to England. To the real towns of Nottingham, Loxley and Sherwood Forest.

Robin was one of the only people in Storybrooke where he wasn't considered just a fairytale character or a fictional character in a fantasy book from 'a land far far away'. He wasn't just a folk hero, he had been a very real person in this world who had lived in a very real country and was associated with very real towns.

A real Robin Hood had existed in this land without magic. A real Robin Hood had been almost inhumanly talented with a bow, a real Robin Hood had been honored and revered and loved so Regina thought it might do him good to see himself celebrated.

She certainly didn't count on seeing Robin sitting on a metal bench in a jail cell handcuffed with blood gushing from his nose as part of their holiday however.

Things had gone rather swimmingly before that.

Mostly.

That mischievous grin she had fallen in love with made its way easily back on his face when he realized where she was taking him. When he saw the statue of himself in all his glory, arrow drawn and pointed at Nottingham Castle with his sword at his side wearing that "god awful hat I wore ONCE thanks to a lost bet," Regina swore she saw tears of pride brimming in his bright blue eyes.

He watched with a smile as a young boy, no older than five, with a stuffed Disney Robin Hood fox in his hand, ran up to the statue and Robin laughed as the small boy began to climb the statue with a toothy grin.

"Come here, lad," Robin said with a chuckle as he grabbed the little boy and placed the small child atop his monuments shoulders, being richly rewarded with a beaming grin while the small boy pointed in the same direction that the statues arrow was pointing and let out a rather joyful shout of, " _get the sheriff!"_

But any amusement was short lived when a very angry, "get off that!" was barked behind them

Robin, Regina and the little boy all turned towards the voice and spotted a very irate cop running towards them. Robin frowned at the officer as he glared up at the now frightened child.

"Get off there NOW!" the cop barked at the boy.

The thief just raised his brow at the man.

"He's not hurting anything," Robin argued and Regina bit her lip against her boyfriends insolence.

Apparently he had forgotten not all cops were like Emma and David…

The cop stormed up to the thief but Robin just stood his ground while the cop jabbed a finger at the statue. "That there is one of Nottingham's most famous landmarks! Then you go and let your son climb all over it!"

"He's not my son, actually, I have no idea who the boys parents are. However," the thief said a bit crossly. "I know for a fact that the man that statue was made in honor of would have NO problem with a small child having a bit of fun on it."

The cop glared furiously at Robin, crossing his arms in front of his uniform, neither men willing to back down from the other.

"Well I'm the officer in charge here and _I_ have a problem with it. So either get him off the statue now or I'm issuing you a ticket."

Robin saw Regina over the man's shoulder shaking her head. The last thing they needed was for their vacation to be cut short because they were in a foreign jail.

Which was why Robin merely returned his icy stare before he grabbed hold of the boy from atop the statues shoulder and set him down gently on the ground.

"Keep your bloody kid off the statues," the cop warned them before he turned and stormed away.

"Bloody git," Robin muttered but before any other words could be spoken a man with the same green eyes as the little boy he had assisted jogged up to them.

"George, I told you not to go running off," the father gently chastised as he picked up the small boy, his British accent a bit less posh than Robins. He turned towards the man who had almost gotten his son in trouble and smiled at him. "He wasn't annoying you or anything was he?"

"No of course not, he was a perfect little gentlemen."

The boy apparently named George gave a toothy grateful smile at Robin for keeping the secret that he had been climbing on the statue.

"Oh I'm sure," the father said with a laugh as if he didn't quite believe the thief. He turned towards his son and put him atop his own shoulders and turned towards the statue. "He's right obsessed with him," the father told Robin who had to bite back a laugh and instead just nodded.

Regina chuckled softly and walked over to her thief while he wrapped his arm around her waist.

"Saw that bloody Disney movie and hasn't been able to talk about anything else. Drove all the way down from Manchester just so he could visit. Where you from?"

Robin couldn't help the tug of his lips.

"Loxley, originally."

He saw the boys eyes light up at the name he knew had to be familiar to him. "But now my family and I live in a little town in the states called Storybrooke."

"Oh really? Well you must have grown up hearing all his legends and stories and being surrounded by the poor bloke. Probably got sick of him after a bit I'd imagine," the man said with a laugh.

Robin just chuckled while Regina stood in front of him and wrapped her arms around him.

"I for one would never get sick of Robin Hood," the Queen said with a knowing smirk. Robin grinned before he gave her a quick kiss.

"Good to know, M'lady," he said softly, kissing her again.

Both of them turned back to the statue while the man looked at his watch.

"Oops. Lad, we've gotta get going. We promised your mum we'd be home for dinner."

The boy whined softly but with a promise they could come back next Saturday, the boys short lived protests came to an end.

"I'm sorry, I didn't even catch either of your names," the man said to the two strangers.

Regina introduced herself first and shook the man's hand as he told them his name was Charles and when it was the outlaws turn he just smiled and told them simply;

"Robin."

The boys eyes lit up again and his jaw dropped as his father laughed.

"Blimey, you're from Loxley and you're named Robin? You must have caught all sorts of hell."

"Papa, what if he's really Robin Hood?" the small boy asked in a loud enough whisper for the thief to hear as he clutched his stuffed fox.

Robin just chuckled at the small boy and winked at him. "You never know…"

With that the father turned with the boy on his shoulders and walked away with the boy looking back and forth between the statue and the man standing beside it.

"You made that little boy's whole year probably," Regina said as she rested her head atop his shoulder. "Almost got arrested in the process but it was worth it."

"Apparently I'm hated by all Nottingham cops in all realms," he told her with a prideful smirk.

"And you're actually proud of that fact are you?"

"Just a tad."

Regina chuckled before she reached up and gave him a quick kiss. "You wanna check out the gift shop before we head up to Sherwood?"

She laughed at how wide and bright his eyes became.

"I have a gift shop!?"

Regina grabbed his hand and headed out of the square where the statues were and walked a block south from the giant stone castle towards the small storefront she had seen on their walk over.

Robins chest was bursting with pride at the sign above the window and the display in the window full of T-shirts and hoodies, Regina did her best to ignore the one that had 'Robin & Marian' scrawled into a heart, , toy bows and arrows, books and movies… all featuring him.

Besides the store was a man with overgrown matted hair, a torn army jacket with a shabby torn blanket wrapped around him in an effort to keep out the chill of a cool British afternoon and sad embarrassed dark green eyes cast down at the cracked sidewalk.

The man had a dirty styrofoam cup beside him and Regina and Robin could see there was hardly any change in it.

Then he noticed the people walking in and out of the gift shop celebrating the outlaw and his deeds of giving to the poor and less fortunate while they ignored the homeless man or even looked down at him with disdain and his heart crumbled.

How could they just ignore that man or look at him like he was nothing? How could they claimed to love Robin and everything he stood for while being disgusted at a man who would have been at the top of the Outlaws list when it came to people he helped?

What was having admiration and love of the people if those who could afford it refused to honor his legacy?

The final straw was when one woman quite obnoxiously wrinkled her nose as she passed the man, making a show of pinching her nose shut as she walked inside and they could see her began to gesture angrily to the man sitting harmlessly outside to the store clerk.

The clerk walked out, a man in his thirties wearing a white t-shirt with that stupid bloody hat on the front with the words 'take from the rich and give to the poor' on the back.

"Oy!" The clerk barked at the man, jabbing the poor man with the bristley end of the broom he had in his hand. "Get out of here!"

Nope. Too far.

The thief stormed over to the clerk and the homeless man, a fire raging in his blue eyes.

"Leave him alone," Robin told the clerk, getting in between the man and the broom while Regina stood beside him glaring at the store worker. "He's not hurting anyone."

"Customers are complaining," the clerk told Robin as if that excused his behavior.

"So you feel that gives you the right to humiliate and berate a man?" Regina demanded.

The clerk rolled his eyes as he pointed at the man still sitting on the ground, his cheeks a furious red. "Get out of here or I'm calling the police," he warned.

Robin pursed his lips as the clerk turned to go back inside.

"Who owns this establishment?" asked Robin.

"My father does, actually," the clerk said with an air of arrogance.

Instead the blue eye man just nodded and kneeled down in front of the humiliated man putting a gentle hand on his shoulder, the first kind touch the man had in years.

"It's alright," Robin promised softly as the clerk walked back into the shop. "We're gonna get you something to eat. Come on, Mate."

They bought the man a large meal of burgers and fries and Robyn gave him not only every cent he had on him, fifty pounds, but he also sacrificed his own hoodie to keep him warmer at night.

After they left him at a coffee shop with a hot tea so he could have something to warm his hands, all Robin had to do was look at Regina and she just knew what he was planning.

"No," she warned him.

"I can't let that kind of treatment slide," he argued.

"And what if you get caught?"

"I can't let them get away with what he did to that man. Not to mention the way people who apparently adore me enough to go to a gift shop and buy things commemorating me but then looking at him like he was nothing?" He shook his head in disgust. "I can't live with that, Regina. Not a ONE of them helped him or donated to his woes, not a single one."

Regina sighed, rubbing her temples. This was going to end badly, she knew it would…

"Robin… you can't rob your own gift shop."

"Why not?"

"Because it… you just can't."

"Don't think of it as robbing a gift shop, think of it as cashing a long overdue commission check."

Regina pursed her lips as she looked over his desperate face for a moment before she relented with a careful; "if you get arrested…"

Robin just smirked and kissed her, promising that things would be just fine.

But, like most things in Regina Mills life, things were not fine.

Regina had went with him that night to keep lookout. He had broke in easy enough with the two hairpins he kept in his pocket for occasions such as this but when it came to opening the register he was having a bit more difficulty.

"Robin, hurry up!" Regina whispered nervously when it took far longer for Robin to open the register than she suspected it would have taken.

"Damn things electronic," he explained with a whisper as he worked on jimmying it open with his pocket knife. "I can't- aha!"

Regina sighed with relief as the till opened and watched as Robin grabbed the cash from the register and stuffed it into his jacket pockets.

"Okay let's go… Robin, come on."

"Hang on," he told her as he began to work on the other register. "Just give me one second…."

Just as Regina began to protest, the tell tale sirens and flashing lights pulled up in front of the store making them both freeze.

"You said you would keep a lookout!" Robin hissed angrily.

"I did keep a lookout, I'm just not very good at it!" Regina argued as he hurried over to her, grabbing her hand and pulling her into the supply room in the back. "Forgive me for not having a lot of expertease in B&E!"

Robin shushed her, looking around for something, anything to let them escape but there was nothing besides several stacks of t-shirt's, a few toy bows and a stack of coloring books.

"How fast can you run?" he breathed as the sounds of footsteps came closer to where they were hiding.

"In heels?"

“Who wears heels to a robbery?!”

”I’m sorry that not all of us are well versed in what constitutes a proper wardrobe for committing grand larceny!”

Robin bit his lip as the door to the supply closet began to open. He grabbed one of the toy bows and the plunger arrows, took a deep breath, and wrenched open the door.

In rapid succession Robin fired the toy arrows at the cops, distracting them long enough so that Robin could grab hold of Regina and forced their way past them.

One of the officers recovered quickly and reached out, managing to grab Regina's wrist and yank her backwards. Robin used all of his strength and then some to pull her back towards him, practically throwing her across the room.

Instead of Robin running alongside her he launched himself at both cops, sending the three of them to the hardwood floor.

"RUN!" Robin yelled at his Queen, not just fighting with both cops for the hell of it but, Regina realized, to give her a head start and to put the focus on him instead of her.

Regina stood frozen for a moment, moving only when one of the cops broke past the thief to grab hold of Regina only for Robin to grab hold of the officer and yank him back into the fray.

"I said run!" he shouted again and this time Regina obeyed.

Sure enough a few hours later her phone rang.

It was Robin.

Asking her for bail money.

Regina, however, didn't show up at the jail until later that night. It was almost six in the evening when Regina showed up at the Nottingham jail. An older man with dark brown hair peppered with grey and honey brown eyes trailing behind her.

She was worried Robin would be upset or even angry for letting him sit in jail for the day but instead he just sat as calm as you'd like on the metal bench in the cell, one of his hands handcuffed the the bars, surprisingly fresh blood gushing from his nose, a rather large bruise on his eye and quite the cut on his lip but also looking as smug as you'd pleased.

"You spend way too much time in the jails in this town," she said with a small smirk as she spotted the man she loved sitting in the cell.

Robin looked up at the sound of her voice and smiled at her.

"Hello, M'lady," he said with an air of bravado. "How's your day been?"

"Going fairly well. Yours?"

Robin just shrugged, that mischievous glint in his eyes not fading. "Could've been better."

"Oy! No talking!" the same cop that had chastised him yesterday about the statue, now sporting several fist sized bruises and cuts on his face, far more than Robin was sporting, barked at the prisoner.

She could finally standing close enough to where she could see the name 'Knotts' on his name plate.

Regina raised her brow at the officer as a realization seemed to hit her.

"...Robin, how did your nose get bloodied a full ten hours after you fought?"

"I tripped," the thief told her as calmly as if he were talking about the weather. "Amazing how that happens from inside a jail cell."

The Queens smug look was quickly replaced with a fire filled glare that had Knotts shifting uncomfortably in his shoes.

"That so?" she barked.

"It is, M'lady." It was then Robin noticed the man standing next to Regina. He looked vaguely familiar to the thief. He was sure he saw those eyes before. "Who's this then?"

Without taking her hateful eyes off the cop she motioned the the brown haired man beside her. "This man actually owns the gift shop you broke into."

Robins bravado fell while Knotts spirit seemed to soar.

"Oh is it?" Knotts said. "Well, Sir, you'll be pleased to know that we have recovered all the cash the thief apprehended and we have at least one of the thieves in custody. He refuses to tell us who his accomplice is but we're getting close. He let it slip the other thief is from London."

A look of confusion flashed on Regina's face but Robin just smirked from behind the sheriff who was none the wiser.

"Well thank you for the hard work you've done," the stranger said, "but I ain't pressing charges."

If the situation wasn't so serious Regina would have laughed. Robin beamed at the newly acquired information while Knotts jaw dropped to the floor.

"He… Sir, he stole from you. We caught him red handed with over three hundred pounds in his pockets!"

"Yeah he did," he said, surprisingly upbeat about the information. "Still don't change my mind."

The man turned his attention towards Robin and shared a smile with the still befuddled thief.

Those eyes looked so damn familiar...

Knotts cleared his throat to interrupt the moment that was far more significant for Robin than either the cop or the thief knew.

"That's fine and dandy you don't wanna press charges but he assaulted not one but two officers. He ain't getting outta that one."

Regina threw a glare at the cop who visibly shrank back.

"I tell you what," the brunette told him, not leaving so much as an inch to argue. "You drop the assault charge, I'll make sure my boyfriend won't sue YOU for assault because you were embarrassed that one man bested two officers."

"I did not assault him!" Knotts fired back and Regina just raised her brow.

"Then how did he get the fresh bloody nose? Not to mention it's against British law to cuff a man inside a jail cell and yet there he sits, handcuffed to the bars."

Regina had no idea if that last bit was true or not but judging from the look on the cops face, she assumed she was right.

Knotts threw a sharp glare at the Queen for a moment before he went over to the cell and unlocked the door as well as uncuffing Robin who just stood up from the hard metal bench, stood toe to toe with the cop for a moment, before he merely smirked and walked out of this realms version of the jail he had spent far too much time in...

Once they were outside Robin turned towards the man who had granted him his freedom.

"Thank you, Sir," Robin told him as he stuck out his hand, giving his savior a strong handshake. "For not pressing charges."

"Don't worry about it. The Queen told me what you were planning to do with the money."

"I couldn't let what your boy did slide," Robin admitted. "I mean he was making a damned near mockery of-..."

His jaw snapped shut as he looked from Regina to the grinning stranger. "Did… did you just call her the- the Queen?"

The stranger grinned at the confused thief. "You don't remember me do ya?"

"I'm… I'm sorry, I don't. Have we met before? From… another place?"

"I was a bit more spry in my younger days but… you saved my life, Robin. I broke me leg, couldn't work… Me, the babe, my wife… We all woulda starved if it wasn't for you."

Robins face fell as he took in the man who had rescued him, suddenly remembering where he had seen those same brown puppy dog eyes before.

"Otto?"

Otto Dogford, now several years older than Robin remembered, grinned and wrapped the stunned thief in a tight bear hug.

"Aye it is, it is! Blimey, it's good to see you, Robin!"

Robin let out a stunned laugh as he hugged the older man back.

"But… how- I-... Otto, we were the same age…"

"Me and my boy escaped to this land before the curse struck, I moved to the most familiar place I knew," he explained. He chuckled and nodded towards the Queen. "You can imagine the nasty shock I got when she came walking through the door, aye?"

"I did apologize for scaring you," Regina piped up.

"Aye you did. But when she told me what me boy had done to that poor bloke and who had been the one to actually rob me… Damn near wanted to cry, Robin. I tried to raise me boy right but… guess he forgot where he came from.

I told him to just let the bloody man alone be but he hates him being there but he ain't hurtin nobody. He just sits there quiet, I bring him a coffee when I come into work…"

Otto shook his head in disgust.

"It's like no one remembers why this town celebrates you in the first place. It's like they forgot what Robin Hood actually did for the people here and why we revere you so much. But that's why I opened up that shop, to remind people exactly how you helped people, how you saved men like him, men like me…"

Regina swore she saw her soulmate holding back tears.

"Thank you, Otto. That… means more to me right now than you know."

The dog eared man smiled at his hero, clapping him in the shoulder.

"The Queen said you were in town for a bit," he said. "If you wanna go get a pint, catch up, tell me how the hell the prince of thieves ended up with the Queen of the whole damn realm, I'll be happy to oblige."

Robin looked over at his Queen.

"You wanna come along?"

"It would be a right treat to have a pint with the Queen," Otto added.

Regina smiled and nodded.

"Sure. I'd like that."

Robin kissed her quickly and the two soulmates followed the man down the street.

"Of course," Otto said as they walked towards one of his favorite pubs. "You're gonna have to pay. Some bloke robbed me shop last night."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please Review! There might be another few chapters added to this but only if y'all are interested in it


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